


The Arc of Conflict, Saga 18: A Prisoner of Oasis

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [115]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Allegory, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Background Poly, Background Relationships, Canon Lesbian Character, Conditioning, Dissociation, F/F, Gen, Goddesses, Human Experimentation, Identity, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Lesbian Character, Mental Breakdown, Multi, Oasis (Overwatch), Post-Talon, Prisoner of War, Recovery, Russia, Science Experiments, Suicide Attempt, Talking, Talon Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Talon Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, Talon Lena "Tracer" Oxton, The Prisoner References, Therapy, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Katya Volskaya's government in Russia has destroyed the omnium Koschei, and held their own against the Gods of Oasis. But with Jesse McCree having upset a precarious balance, Lena, Hana, and Sombra have intervened in Russia's rising civil war, and the fragile peace between Overwatch and Oasis has been shattered.A Russian Overwatch agent surprises a goddess by attempting to take her own life when captured. Fareeha Amari and Lena Oxton would both like to know why.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflictis a continuance ofThe Arc of Ascension,The Arc of Creation, andThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. To follow the story as it appears,please subscribe to the series.
Relationships: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari & Original Character(s)
Series: Of Gods and Monsters [115]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024
Comments: 19
Kudos: 30





	The Arc of Conflict, Saga 18: A Prisoner of Oasis

**Author's Note:**

> While I have tagged this appropriately, there is no top-level archive warning for attempted suicide. This is in place of that warning.
> 
> Words have turned on again. I don't know how long they'll stay on, but I've got a couple of additional fragments in various stages of ready, so... hopefully for a little while. I'm not about to start posting buffer watch again, though.
> 
> Thanks for being so patient.
> 
> dirtyclaws has launched [a public fan-run _Of Gods and Monsters_ discord server](https://discord.gg/pDZMpVT) and invites everyone to come join it. ^_^

The Gods tried to stay out of Russia. They even tried to avoid Overwatch, when they could. And for the most part, they did. Fareeha's Talons had more interactions with Overwatch agents on the ground than anyone else - if a Russian group of Talons found an Overwatch station in Russia, they took care of the problem, and rarely needed what they had come to refer to as 'divine intervention.' The amount of blood shed on each side varied rather widely, with the primary difference that the Talons got their blood back most of the time, and the Overwatch forces often didn't.

But sometimes they did. Sometimes, they'd wake up in their homes, back where they came from, their resignations already dutifully submitted, sometimes with new jobs already lined up, sometimes not, depending upon their skills, and how much Fareeha needed someone in a certain role similar to the one they'd played in Overwatch.

Never too obviously, of course. Through a front company. A security service, a business management service, a contractor of some sort, and import/export facilitation company. The usual sorts of obfuscations and covers. Enough that their friends outside of Overwatch would think little or nothing of it.

The surprising part was how few of them needed any more than a conversation or two to change their minds. Fareeha Amari had been impressive, before, as a human. Now - as a Goddess - here mere appearance could sway opinion in hardly more than a moment and a few choice words, sweeping people along in her certainty.

Certainty in her faith in them - and in herself.

And sometimes, as the winter wore on, Katya Volskaya would notice someone important, suddenly gone. Retired. Changing careers. Not anyone too close, but people in the corners. In the countryside. In the distant cities. In the east, and in the south.

And once in a great while, she would see one someone like that, and would notice the slightest shimmer of gold in their eyes, a shimmer that would vanish, as if never there, and she would suppress a shudder, look again, and see nothing amiss.

But she could feel the circle closing.

Slowly.

One person at a time.

\-----

"No no no no no no, none of that, luv," Lena said, yoinking the hollow tooth - and the poison capsule which had moments before been embedded in it - out of the Overwatch agent's mouth. She stared at the pill, her face split between a smirk and something akin to horror. "That's not standard issue these days, is it?"

The Russian - a prisoner, kneeling on the floor with a few other Overwatch rank and file - stared back in dismay, too stunned to glare at the Oasis agent. She'd been prepared to die to avoid capture, to avoid spilling secrets, and most of all, to avoid being made into one of _them_. So she'd acted, biting down hard, the tooth shattering, the bitter warning taste a last chance to spit it out, to seek medical attention - and swallowed.

She could almost feel her death coming, the numbness followed by oblivion. The capsule had been halfway down her throat.

She was sure of it.

Until it wasn't.

She'd been prepared to die. She knew this. But she hadn't been fast enough, hadn't been... hadn't...

...died.

Her eyes glassed over and she stared at nothing, partly out of shock, partly out of her readiness for oblivion being met with unwanted continued life.

"Knock knock, luv," She heard, along with a slight tapping on the side of her skull. "Still in there? Can't tell me I didn't get it all, I'm pretty sure I did."

She blinked, slowly, but did not respond.

"Lena," she heard a new voice say. "Stop badgering the prisoner. She's traumatised enough."

"Got that right. Check this out!"

"What is... is this a suicide tablet?"

"Think so. She tried to swallow it. I stopped 'er. Wasn't about t'let that happen."

She heard someone turning on one heel, a boot sliding along the floor, and the crinkling of a bag.

"Get that to analysis. It's something new. But call a medic first - whatever it is, it's not good, and we don't know how much she might still have in her system."

"Ma'am."

"Should I get mum?"

That was Tracer. What was left of her conscious mind was sure of that much.

"No. I don't think so, not yet."

Another person - a man, stocky, dark skinned, black, short hair, a medical lens over one eye - stepped up, flashing a light into her eyes.

"Let me talk to her after the medic is done checking her out. Alone."

\-----

"What is this?" the Russian asked, half a day and a rather disturbing teleportation trip later.

"Your room," Fareeha said, as the door opened before her. "For now."

"My cell," the Russian replied.

"If you want to call it that. Go on in."

The Overwatch agent who had not died stepped through the doorway into... a kitchenette, small but complete, ending in a bar which separated it from a sitting area. Walking tentatively further forward, she saw that the partition at her right ended short of the far window wall, revealing the edge of a platform where a bed should be, but wasn't, and around that corner...

"The bed controls are here," her captor said, following her in, tapping at a hovering display panel. "We didn't know what you'd want, so you can select whatever is comfortable."

"I can..."

She drifted over to the hardlight padd, and saw a selection of beds. Picking one at random, she jumped back as her selection materialised into place.

"Hardlight. Bed." she managed, blinking several times. "In a... cell."

"The bathroom is through that door, past the closet," Fareeha added, pointing to the right of the bed, in a direction which would be back towards the hallway, the room shaped in the end like a U. "I'm afraid you will be watched, though. After that unfortunate incident when my Talons and I captured your team, Lena insisted. She's been worried sick."

The agent reflexively felt her new tooth with her tongue. _Her_ tooth, her own tooth, not an implant, made of... whatever teeth are made of, she supposed, grown into place in a few minutes' time by a medical technician here, in Oasis. Where she'd been taken.

She'd never felt so afraid in her entire life. Two commendations for bravery didn't change how she felt, they just testified to how well she worked past it. And she still felt the fear.

They'd said they'd do nothing to her. She did not believe them. She did not know what they might already have done, knowing that if they didn't want her to know, she never would.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "You could make me into whatever you want. You could change my mind and I'd never know."

"Yes, we could," Fareeha agreed. "That happened to me, and I didn't know for a very long time."

"We know. And we know you don't care."

"I'm _glad_ of it. I like who I am, where I am. What I am. And what we're doing."

"And you could do that to me, and I'd feel the same way."

"But we haven't."

"I don't know that. I can't know that."

"Perhaps not," Fareeha agreed. "But none of this would make any sense, if we had."

"Commander Morrison debriefed us about all of you - about how Tracer changed, slowly. How to watch for it happening."

"Well, if you wake up missing a week or so, be sure to tell me. I'll check into it."

 _Was that a joke?_ the Russian wondered.

"That was a joke," Fareeha said, with a bit of a smile.

The Russian jumped a little, startled. "Can you read my mind?"

The imposing woman laughed. "No. Was that what you were thinking?"

"Yes." She looked around at all the overwhelming everything, feeling lost, feeling detached, almost dizzy, a world turned surreal, strange, and occasionally impossible.

She walked slowly over to the bed, and put her hand on it. It felt... soft. Comfortable. Real. And so, she slowly sat, sinking just a little into the... _what would this even be? Is it still a mattress if it's not even really there?_

She shook her head, once, then again, trying to find some footing for her thoughts.

"Why... this?"

"Why what?"

"Hardlight. Bed."

The Brigadier mouthed a little _ah_ sound.

"The sheets won't let you hang yourself with them."

"...oh."

"Nothing in here will let you harm yourself, in fact. And if you get too creative, well, as I said - medical is watching. A response team would be here within fifteen seconds."

"I won't."

"I hope that's true."

The Overwatch agent stood, trying to force some discipline back into her mind, reminding herself: _I am a prisoner of war. This is a cell._ "When I am to be interrogated?"

"You won't be. We want you to see what we are building. We hope that if you do, you will reconsider the necessity of what you almost did. But... an interrogation?" Fareeha shook her head, with a small sad smile. "We don't need to do that. There's nothing you could know that we don't know already."

"Then what am I supposed to do here?"

"Whatever you want, within limits."

 _I'm an experiment,_ she thought, and discovered she'd whispered it as she thought it, as Fareeha shrugged.

"You're the first Overwatch agent we've ever seen try to die like that," she said. "And we'd really like to know why."

\-----

The watch on her left arm didn't bother her. It looked rather like an ordinary watch, and it told the time perfectly, in a very analogue way, a metal face with diamond for glass, four complications magnified by density changes in the flat surface. It also opened doors that otherwise could not be opened - like her own.

She just couldn't take it off. Not outside of her cell. They'd made that very clear. She'd tried anyway, several times in different ways, and found herself abruptly back in her room each time, just as she did when she decided to see what would happen if she tried to leave the city, and later, when she'd thrown herself off a balcony and landed on her own hardlight bed.

But she never felt changed, much less Changed.

 _I guess no one ever would,_ she thought. _None of **them** did. No one they change ever seems to feel it, do they?_

She was a bit of a showpiece, she'd come to recognise. Kid gloves of the softest kind. A therapist daily, just talking. She kept it distant and formal, and they let her. Apparently, therapist visits weren't even too unusual - perfectly normal medical care, for those who insisted upon what her therapist called the slow-but-steady route.

They never asked her for anything. They didn't even ask that she talk.

At first, she didn't. Later, she did, but not about anything secret. It seemed to help.

One day, walking about the city, she saw someone else wearing a watch very much like her own, sitting at a small table with two chairs in a little garden that was part of an outside cafe, dreadlocks long and colourfully beaded, eyes brown, quick, and entirely free of gold. They were looking at a menu - a physical menu, paper - and she walked up to them, and as she did they looked up, and caught her gaze, expression wary, but curious.

She pointed at her watch, and their gaze set a little more firmly, and they tapped the crystal of their own in return.

"May I join you?" she asked, a little too eagerly.

"Please," they said. "Given your choice in timepieces, I imagine you have the same arrangement as I, for meals?"

"I presume so," she said, stepping around a flowery stone planter, pulling out the metal chair, dragging it across the pavement. It made no noise, when it should've. None of them did. She'd almost got used to it, but not quite. She sat down, dragging the chair forward - all but silently, again, of course.

"I've already ordered coffee," the stranger said. Or were they a stranger? No, she was sure they were not. Overwatch, definitely. She'd seen them, once, a world of time ago. "I'm sure they'll bring a second cup."

"I find I always enjoy blini with strawberries and banana slices in hot weather," she said.

"I prefer cream and chocolate myself," they replied. "In the French style."

"It's only too bad we aren't in Paris."

"Or Petrograd," they replied, "depending upon your tastes."

"They're listening," she said.

"Of course," they replied. "I presume you used such an old recognition exchange so as not to hand them a more recent one."

She sagged a little in relief. "Yes. How long?"

"How long have I been here? Four months. I haven't told them a thing. You?"

"Two and a half weeks. Nothing. And I never will."

"Good. So that makes you the new number eight, I suppose. Or is that me?"

"I don't understand."

"Ah, of course not. That's fine. I'm being obscure. But you are a prisoner, just as am I, n'est ce pas?"

Their little bit of French carried a clear Congolese accent, and she immediately loved it.

" _Da_ ," she answered, confirming what the exchange had already made clear. "Have you encountered any of our other friends here?"

"Yes, once in a while," they said, handing her the menu. "I know what I want, and I did come here to eat. You should select something too. It's all quite good."

"I'm sure it is," she said, taking the menu. "How often?"

"A few times, not many. One man, only once. Most often, a couple I knew from Kinshasa, who had watches at first, and then, one day, no longer did."

Her gaze froze on one line of the menu. Blini. Strawberries. Banana slices. In the Russian style. Of course.

It wasn't even a crêpery, and yet.

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

"So there's a limit to their patience," she managed, after a moment.

"I don't think so," they said, shaking their head. "But I think there are limits to ours."

"What do you mean?"

"You're new. Look around. Really look around."

"I have. There's no one here over forty, and they're all very energetic, moving like athletes and dancers, even the ones without noticeable gold in their eyes. It's bizarre. What have they done with the older people?"

"Nothing," they said. "Do you know what you want?"

"Do you?" she asked, suspiciously. "Know? What I want?"

"Ah," they said. "Blini on the menu today?"

"Yes."

"Terrifying, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Get used to it. At least, until the watch comes off. Then you won't need to." They smiled a smile bright as sunlight, waving towards a waiter, standing near the doorway into the inside dining area. "I eat here a couple of times a week. That's Radwon. He's over sixty."

"...he looks 20."

"He's vain. I am too. I like him rather a lot."

She blinked, adding age to that face in her mind.

"...did he used to have a watch?"

"Yes," they said. "He did."

What felt like weeks passed, after that lunch. She did not see her Congoese friend again, except for one time, at a distance, getting into a taxi with Radwon, with luggage. She shouted, and waved.

They both smiled and waved back, then handwaved apologies about time and going before getting into the taxi and being driven away.

She couldn't quite tell, but felt entirely sure they no longer had their watch.

\-----

"Is that what you do?" she asked Fareeha Amari.

The Goddess stood with the prisoner in the Russian's raisin black, gainsboro gray and desert sand kitchenette, a small tea service sitting beside them atop the taller counter - the bar, really - separating off the rest of her room. Fareeha had poured, setting her teacup and coaster on that higher counter, while the Russian kept hers close, in her hands.

How a Brigadier had time to stop by weekly for tea, the Russian didn't understand. But it kept happening. It was good tea. She found herself looking forward to it - and to being around Fareeha.

It wasn't romantic. She was just so charismatic, carrying with her so much raw presence. She knew she shouldn't think so, and tried not to, but couldn't help it. She could feel it in her bones. Everyone did.

Most of the other 'gods' bothered her in so many ways, just seeing them around the city. Particularly the blue ones - terrifying.

But Fareeha...

Fareeha was different.

(Efi and Orisa were also different, but they were both really just children. Hyperintelligent children with immense power, perhaps, but children still, and adorable. So they did not count.)

She had stumbled across a shrine to the Huntress one day in her exploration of the city, and wandered inside, in no small part just to cool off. She'd always found the quiet of churches comforting. As it turned out, that one was no exception.

"What we do?" Fareeha said, curiosity in her voice. "Sugar?"

"Please." She shook her head, refocusing. "Yes. Is that what you do. Pair people off. Make them... happy. Win them over that way. Or do you change them slowly, so they don't miss time, and so slowly they don't ever notice?"

"We could do that," Fareeha replied, picking up a silver sugar bowl. "But generally we don't. That's just what people do themselves. I'm not the same person now I was five years ago, and she wasn't the same person she was five years before that. People change. One lump or two?"

"Three."

Fareeha grinned, and dotted one, two, three sugar lumps into the prisoner's large teacup as the Russian stirred with a small, silver spoon, the sugar sublimating into the hot tea.

She put the spoon aside.

"Your therapist says you're doing well. That you're no longer a danger to yourself."

"I think... I think not," the Russian agreed, watching Fareeha sip from her own cup, before putting it back down. "I don't know why. All we've done is talk about nothing."

"Are you happier, now?" Fareeha asked, leaning onto the lower countertop behind her, sculptural yet fluid, as if made of living, liquid metal. It was breathtaking, really. It made her heart race, and she didn't even like women. Not that way.

"No," the Russian insisted, taking a sip of the tea to fortify herself. "But I admit... your people are. Or else they're all really good at faking it."

"Freedom from _fear_ ," Fareeha said with a nod, "works more miracles than anything else we do."

 _No one here is afraid_ , the Russian realised, all at once. _That's what I didn't see, what I've missed. It's not the athleticism, it's not the energy, it's that there's no fear at all. **None** of them are af..._

The saucer cracked and the cup dropped from her hand as she let them both go, the thought hitting her like an electric shock.

Fareeha, quick like lightning, caught it all almost before it fell, not a drop spilled.

 _My god_ , she thought, looking at the Huntress looming large before her, handing her back the cup, and she drank deep without even thinking of it. _She's ... magnificent._

"Why did you want to die?" Fareeha asked, her voice soft.

"I was afraid," she burst out, unable, no, unwilling to stop herself anymore, the words tumbling out like tears. "I was afraid. Of you. Of them. Of everything. I was... so... afraid. I'd always pushed past it, but... I couldn't, anymore. Not that time."

She stared down at the cup she and Fareeha now held together, between them, hands just touching. Lightly. Warm.

"I... I just couldn't face any more fear."

"You don't have to be afraid anymore," Fareeha said, carefully setting aside the tea, taking the Russian's hands into her own, moving even closer. "No one does."

She looked into her goddess's opal eyes, and found there only certainty.

"...I know."

She began to shudder, as the rest of her mind began to understand.

"Hold me?" she whispered. "For a moment?"

"Always."

\-----

"Well, you seem to be back to perfect health," Dr. Ziegler said. "Last chance to back out - do you feel ready?"

It was specifically Dr. Ziegler, too. Not Angela, not Mercy, not the _Goddess_ Mercy in particular. Her Goddess's wife may also be a goddess, but she was not _her_ goddess.

That privilege was reserved for Fareeha.

"I do feel ready. I'm looking forward to being back to doing real work," the Russian replied. "If I can just make people see what you are - what all this really is... the war will be over by spring."

"I certainly hope you are right," Dr. Ziegler replied, a warm smile appearing on her face. "It's all such nonsense, and so unnecessary. I would end it this very moment if I could."

She handed over a passport and set of tickets - redundant, but one never knows what could go wrong. "Aleksandra's people will meet with you and your new working group for final debriefing and assignment once you have arrived in Volgograd."

"Of course," she said, taking the documents and adding them to her travel wallet. Then, she shook out her shoulders, adjusted her coat - easier to wear it than carry it, even in this weather - and picked up the small piece of luggage she'd chosen to take with her. Almost everything she had here would stay here, safely in her apartment; everything she'd need in Russia would be awaiting her there, so there was no need for anything more.

Not that it mattered. She felt remarkably self-sufficient, these days.

She started to turn towards the door, but stopped herself.

"Did you change me?" she asked. "I don't mean the medical. I don't mind if you did. I feel much better than I... than I ever have. But did you..."

"I know what you mean," Mercy gently interrupted, "but no. Not at all."

"You didn't."

The Russian wanted to believe her, but she needed to hear it said in the most definitive way possible.

"Really. _Really_ really?"

Dr. Ziegler straightened, floating tall in front of the Russian, and put her hand on her chest, over her heart.

"I swear on the name of my own wife, Fareeha, Pharah, the Huntress of the Gods, we did not. All we did..."

The Goddess Mercy paused for a moment, in thought.

"All we did was give you everything you needed to change yourself. You did the rest, all on your own."

Nadia looked inward, and found herself whole.

"Thank you."

"Thank _yourself_. After all..."

She smiled brightly, and Nadia thought maybe there was a bit of true goddess in her, too, after all.

"In the end, it was all up to you."

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, this instalment is not linking correctly to the next instalment. [Here's the next instalment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827801).
> 
> This is the forty-fourth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflict_. To follow the story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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